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Section 230 is a section of Title 47 of the United States Code that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users.
- February 8, 1996
- Section 230
- Protection For 'Good Samaritan' Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material
- the 104th United States Congress
Section 230 of the CDA has had, and will continue to have, a significant and positive impact on online free speech, for US companies and their users both within the US and abroad. The CDA has helped the Wikimedia Projects become what they are today, but until all countries provide equivalent and consistently applied protections to ...
- Introduction
- What Is Section 230?
- Why Was Section 230 created?
- What Has Section 230 Achieved?
Who is responsible for illegal speech? Historically, the laws on intermediary liability—the extent to which a third party is legally responsible for the speech of others—have treated those who publish content differently from those who distribute it. Booksellers and newsstands, for example, are not legally responsible when a book or newspaper they ...
The oft-cited Section 230(c)(1) states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In practice, this means online services are not liable for defamatory or otherwise unlawful content their users post. Section 230(c)(2) ela...
The rationale for Section 230 arose from a pair of court cases in the 1990s that illustrated how existing U.S. law was ill-equipped to handle intermediary liability issues that arose with the rise of the Internet. The first of these cases was Cubby v. CompuServe (1991). The defendant, CompuServe, was an online service that hosted forums dedicated t...
Proponents refer to Section 230 as “a core pillar of [I]nternet freedom” and “the most important law protecting Internet speech,” responsible for creating “the Internet as we know it.”By protecting online services from facing liability for third-party content, it has paved the way for a variety of business models that rely on a wide variety of user...
- Ashley Johnson, Daniel Castro
- 2021
Feb 21, 2023 · WHAT IS SECTION 230? If a news site falsely calls you a swindler, you can sue the publisher for libel. But if someone posts that on Facebook, you can’t sue the company — just the person who...
Section 230 had two purposes: the first was to "encourage the unfettered and unregulated development of free speech on the Internet," as one judge put it; the other was to allow online services to implement their own standards for policing content and provide for child safety.
Section 230 embodies that principle that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements online, but generally not those of others. The law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others say.
Feb 24, 2023 · For decades, courts have interpreted Section 230 to give broad protections to websites. The legislation’s original authors have repeatedly said their intent was to give websites the benefit of...
